This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on Aug. 12, 1939.
Through the window as I write, I see a field of crested wheat grass, growing in even rows and looking as innocent as a field can look. But the story of this new grass reads like romance.
Away back in 1898, a man was sent out from the American Agricultural Department at Washington, to find out what other agricultural scientists were doing in developing a good grass for cattle. Hot, dry summers were searing the pasture lands of the western states and something had to be done.
In Russia, beyond the Volga River, at a place called Valulka, the explorer found a grass that the peasants called “gitniak,” and which they claimed would grow without rain.
It was brought to the United States and tried. That was 41 years ago!
Last year, 43,000 acres in Saskatchewan were sown with this wonder-working grass, all of which was dried-out, useless land from which the owners had departed. Not only was the land sun-cracked and desolate, but some of it was entirely overgrown with Russian thistles. People said nothing but Russian thistles would grow on it, but they were wrong. Crested wheat grass sowed on top of the Russian thistles chokes them out in two years.
At Manyberries, in Alberta, this grass has been growing for 10 years, and it has been proven even to the most skeptical that it will grow year after year, thick and abundant; cattle like it and grow fat on it; it is not only hardier than brome or rye or the common prairie grass, but it is more nutritious.
So here it is, a gift from Russia, and the answer to the prairie’s sorest problem.
Last year, the prairie produced 1.5 million bushels of the seed, and the plan of the government is to turn eight million acres into permanent pastures. The land does not need to be plowed to receive it. It is put down through the Russian thistles, and covered lightly, and the vigour and hardiness of the seed does the rest.
These great stretches of pasture will be held by the government and leased to cattle owners. They will be known as community pastures, and it is hoped will restore the good earth in southern Alberta and Saskatchewan to first-class pasture lands.
So it is no wonder that I see the field which spreads out before me, here in Gordon Head, through a halo of hope. It belongs to a Saskatchewan man who got the seed through the University of Saskatchewan. L.E. Kirk of that university has been interested in this life-saving grass since 1915.
I asked why the idea did not go over more quickly, but I knew the answer. The lure of a big crop dies hard. Each year, hope broke out afresh in the minds of the farmers. Even when the work of reclamation began in Saskatchewan, tractors were busy breaking up more land, and ruining hundreds of acres, which now have to be healed and bound by the new grass.
There is an interesting feature about this grass, which makes it different from any other. It is the length of its roots. A two-year-old plant has roots 90 inches long, and 90 inches is over seven feet. It draws its strength from the hidden depths of earth; and the roots have a wide spread. No wonder the hot winds beat on it in vain.
Crested wheat grass has a significance that we cannot ignore. It has possibilities as a national emblem. It is an allegory of life.
Plants are like people. They have to have roots. Families without roots turn to tumbleweed, human tumbleweed.
When I reached this place in my thinking, I wanted to write a story, entitled Tumbleweed, which would show what happens to a family that has no roots. But before I got my story even started, I read one in a 1936 magazine, which I picked up in an office. Sally Benson is the author’s name, she called her story Suite 3049.
It is a story of a man and his wife — Don and Lois — who had lived all their married life at hotels.
Lois enjoyed the freedom — no dishes, no dusting, no cooking. They always said they would have their own place some day, and read advertisements for houses in the papers — even went to see houses sometimes, but never found just what they wanted. Lois was very critical, and saw faults in the plan or in the locality, and so 12 years passed.
One night they came in from a party — a dull party, the usual kind. Lois was still satisfied with her suite at the hotel. It was the ideal way to live, she often said; no responsibility. No ties. She was glad, this night, she had nothing to do but drop into bed.
Don, who had gone in ahead of her, switched on the light and looked around. He knew every bit of furniture, every doodad — the light on the table, the telephone below, the dull pictures on the wall, all of street scenes. He hated them all as he hated the dinners downstairs. He knew the taste of every dish. He could read the menus with his eyes shut.
He didn’t take off his coat — he looked like a man who was not staying long. He sat down on a chair and handed her the key.
“I won’t need it again,” he said. “I am leaving.”
She stared at him without speaking.
“It’s like this,” he said. “I’m tired of other people’s things. I want something of my own. It’s all right for you, for you like it. I’ll pay your bills just the same.”
She remonstrated. What was the matter with him. Had she offended him?
No, it wasn’t that. It was this deadly sameness, and he wanted to fix up a place of his own. He wanted to get out his old college pictures and frame them and have a place to hang them. He wanted to put his books on the shelves where he could get at them. He wanted to wind up the clock at night, and keep a dog. He wanted to own something.
After he left, she quieted her fears. A man cannot leave his wife for nothing. He would come back in a day or two and life would go on. A marriage could not be broken up without a reason.
But he didn’t come back. Their marriage had perished because it had no roots.
